History *More Print Magazines GONE* (12/06/2019)

That sucks. I love reading car related magazines. I have given boxes and boxes of them away too. I also still have a collection of easy rider. Sad for sure.

 

Just another sickening blow.

 

I just got an offer for Car Craft 2 days ago in my Hot Rod mag. Good thing I saw this before I sent my money in. They knew they were going under and still sent it out. I won't be renewing my Hot Rod subscription after seeing them pull that crap.

 

My grandfather, born in 1872 (yes, 1872) grew up in a completely different world than did my father, who was born in 1920. My father grew up in a completely different world than I did. I was born in 1956, and I grew up in a completely different world than did my son, who was born in 1987. All things change over time. Some take longer to change, but they change nonetheless.
I just looked at my magazine collection. My last issue of R & C was August 2009, over a decade ago. I did not renew because, quite frankly, the content no longer met my interests and needs. By then, the HAMB had pretty much replaced print for me.
I have a lifetime subscription to TRJ. I hope they are still in print long after I'm gone. The quality of their magazine is something the other mags should have considered and emulated, but when corporate suits rather than enthusiasts make the decisions, there's no where to go but down.

 

"The only thing constant is change".

HAMB is now the "little book" and it comes at a touch of a button ! Much better, even to this old guy.

 

There are plenty of folks playing with cars and bikes (and trucks) these days...but the stuff we do, and how we do it, is pretty much going away.

 

Sorry I haven't lived up to your expectations.

 

This announcement was a surprise mainly because of the number of titles shut down. HRD was the only one that I was still buying regularly. I’ve been trying to move forward and embrace the digital world but I find that most sites are too frustrating to read due to buffering and active ads constantly loading/changing, slow loading photos that cause the text to jump while you’re trying to read. Maybe it’s my rural location but I find it’s even more annoying than the endless ads in magazines. I will miss some of the show/event coverage and car features, how else can we see what’s running around in other parts of the country. As far as tech goes, we’ve got the best tech right here already.
I propose that we pick up the slack and post car features here. If we see a particularly nice H.A.M.B. friendly car take pictures, get info and post ‘em here in a feature format just like the magazines did. Let’s make Eric Rickman and ol Gray Baskerville proud.


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Looking at that list, I wonder if some cutting a couple of years ago might have saved some of these titles. With overlaps like: Chevy High Performance and Super Chevy; MotorTrend and Automobile; Car Craft and Hot Rod;
Four Wheeler, 4-Wheel & Off-Road and Jp; and Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords and Mustang Monthly, they had to be cannibalizing each other.
Of the three they kept, two make some sense. They had to keep Motor Trend, having renamed the Velocity Network after it (even though I've never met an enthusiast who actually reads it) and Hot Rod is an iconic brand.
The decision-making is clearly coming from TV people. Their car mags have basically been a paper version of their shows, only with more ads... Any show with garage in the title (All Girls, Hot Rod, Motorhead, Sam's etc) and a few that don't, follow the same format: 'We're installing the ____________ kit from Generic1-800 dot com', a 'new products' segment and 'handy tips'. Translation: advertisement disguised as build, advertisement, advertisement disguised as how-to.
The TV folks repurpose TV content for their websites and appear to think they can do the same with (former) print titles. I think they underestimate the costs and overestimate the revenue. Looking the magazines that were just dropped, the all have four to six full-timers (plus freelancers) on the editorial side and share about the same number on the advertising side with the other TEN titles. Video production (even at web quality) takes at least as much staffing. Text content has little revenue beyond Google Ads. If your fixed costs remain the same, and your revenue streams go down, where's the profit going to come from? I couldn't find a single example of an enthusiast mag that went web-only and made money.
TEN (The Enthusiasts Network, or so they claimed) was born out of the soap opera that was Source Interlink, which, as I recall, came out of Primedia. Both of the latter produced better mags than TEN, which appeared to value political correctness over the interests of actual enthusiasts and put out boring magazines. The saddest thing here is that Discovery/TEN was shopping these titles for about a year and found no buyers.

 

.............Not to worry as I'm not sure he's lived up to his own expectations.

 

Sadly you are oh so very right on this one. When our generation is gone, so all of this will be gone too

 

I had a subscription to a bike magazine that I have had since their first issue in 1972. Got a letter in the mail this year that I would no longer be receiving the magazine and that they owed me $3.49 which I could take out in merch. They had nothing less than 20 bucks so I let them keep it.

 

I was in the automotive aftermarket accessory advertising business for 30+ years. Almost without exception, reader surveys showed that advertising was one of the top three reasons buyers read the magazines. A lot of the publication sponsored project cars had products that the writers had solicited from the manufacturers and/or ad agencies like the ones I worked for. In return for the editorial content, we were expected to buy advertising space. It was a win-win as an endorsement of a product from Baskerville, Thawley, McFarland, etc. had a lot more credibility than a paid ad. I know for a fact that from time to time, products would be returned to the maker as the editorial writers did not want to use them or write about them. When the AMC Javelin was introduced, we did a project in CAR CRAFT involving Jardine, Weber, Offenhauser and Crower. We bought the center spread for a co-op ad, AMC was happy and I think that CC ended up having a contest to give away the car in a contest. I doubt if there have been any ads in the last 25 years in the magazines that would have appealed to HAMB members.

Magazines are using the same business model they started to use in the fifties and continue to use today when it comes to product placement. The only difference is that it is a different demographic.

 

I stopped buying the less essential titles as a random purchase when I saw how thin they'd become, still can't believe SR and HRD are going away though.

I also used to spend hours in record/CD shops, now I have have Spotify...

 

I just called the phone number provided from Ten publishers.I was told a letter is being sent out this week with instructions on choosing other options for my subscription.

 

^^^ well, that mite be some good news..^^^

 

In regard to tv show content and the propensity to talk about kit installation rather than repurposed parts, I wonder if our litigious environment has caused the shows to just use kits that are ‘warrantied’ rather than dealing with claims by watchers that the show’s directions for use were faulty or caused injury. I think this may have changed the way the mags were writing things.

 

I was a print journalist for 17 years, got out of it in 1997, just in time. Many factors killed print journalism, but it also was an inside job, by greedy publishers, lots of incompetent editors and lazy circulation managers. Now you have bullies lying about the media in an attempt to cloud their own mendacity. Doesn't matter whether its newspapers, magazines or any other print venue. We are losing more than meets the eye.

 

x2

 

wow-I remember when Rick Voegelin was editor at Car Craft-sportsman drag racing was the greatest-tech articles,project cars coverage of races and the people that made it seem so cool!! Hard to believe Doug Schriener

 

Those of us who are 70+ remember when we got a rod magazine and not only read every article no matter what kind of car it was on, studied the tech articles a number of times and studied the feature cars in length and then read every add in the magazine over the next few weeks. We had few if any other sources to find hot rod parts and even though a local parts house might just have the catalog from a speed parts manufacture few stocked much in the way of speed parts except the go to places. I think some of those mail order speed shops that advertised in the magazines might have made more money off catalog sales and T shirt sales than parts. A lot of us stuck a buck or two in an envelope and sent it off to get a catalog in those days or a hard earned 5.00 bill for a T shirt including the cost of mailing it. Now guys bitch and whine because there is any advertising in the magazine.

 

Just had a thought..........is John Dianna involved in any of this?.......that bastard screwed me 10 yrs or so ago when I bought a 2yr subscription to Street Rod Builder or some such title, got one issue then zip, nil, nothing......back then it was something like $200 Oz up the spout...........I don't forgive nor do I forget.......lol........Andy Douglas

 

I think John Dianna is dead.

 

Just re-upped at the nats for HR,HRD And SR. .Any way you guys can chunk the mags if you want to.But remember when the 33/45 vinyl records weren't worth anything?? Folks are collecting those things now.

 

From his other posts, the HAMB doesn't live up to his expectations either. Surprised he is still here.

 

"John Dianna is dead"... No shlt, Dick. (Tracy...)
So are many of the '60s bull shLtters in those days' print.
I live with the scraps of 'truth' I exhumed from those sacred pages, and have a wealth of knowledge thanks to the REAL scripts:
Roger Huntington, SAE; Ray Brock, supreme flathead editor, ('Flathead: the Right Way')
Nameless others, namely my former employer/guru, Ak Miller; and a few nameless luminaries, to whom I am forever grateful...
I bury these ever giving volumes of knowledge, and rather than burn them...keep them in safe and sacred boxes for my grandchildren. (namely two granddaughters, as they seem to keep the spirit alive, more than their brothers!)
Cameron and Allison...Go, girls.

 

I knew we were in trouble when they dropped the girls from "Parts with Appeal" in HRD.

 

It kinda blows my mind that Street Rodder is going to be extinct (after almost 50 years!). It used to be my favorite (probably a lot of us). I had every issue from Vol #1 and was an active subscriber for many years, then discontinued subscribing as well as buying various titles off the news stand seemingly overnight around the late 90's.
It was a combination of not being interested in credit card/catalog builds, the expense of the magazines, and the internet developing into an awesome resource with the HAMB being a top example.
In the early/pre internet days, we got exposed to Hot Rodding via magazines and built our knowledge reading them.

I still have a collection of thousands of car magazines and actively built that for many years, but in recent years haven't added to it or pursued missing issues.
Even at that, I cringe to hear you guys are unceremoniously tossing out old car magazines by the hundreds! The 'burning of the books' is sacrilege to me. Sure some of it is fluff, but some of the stuff in the 70's and older can be very sought and valuable after especially if it's in top condition. At least try giving it away to a local HAMBer.

 

Probably won't generate too much sympathy but I just got the last print issue of AutoWeek the other day along with a note saying they will substitute either Car & Driver or some other nonsense rag or I will get a refund on my remaining subscription.Since my wife just re-subscribed for two years I think we will go that route. Hope Denise will still be working there.

 

Well, thats good news that Dianna is dead, so are there any other dropkicks I can wish ill health on or at least include in the blame for the death of print..........lol.........andyd